“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”

(2 Timothy 1:6)

Ordination

The first thing I felt was the weight of all those hands pressing down upon my head, shoulders, and back. Never in my life had I felt heavier—or safer—than at the moment when I knelt before the altar, crowded by men in white robes and red stoles. When more than twenty pastors laid their hands on me at once, transferring upon me the mantel of my ministry, I felt the enormity of my task and the weight of the words I had promised in my ordination vows just moments earlier.

One by one, the pastors spoke a Word of scriptural encouragement to me, mostly from Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus.

“Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands,” Paul instructed his young protégé, Timothy, after appointing him to ordain pastors on the island of Crete (1 Tim. 5:22, ESV). Don’t be hasty! Make sure you know who you are dealing with—and that they know what they are getting themselves into—before you ordain them!

But you never really know what you’re getting into when you decide to become a pastor. You must be half crazy to imagine you can go into a church somewhere, step into a pulpit, and tell people mysteries about God and their own lives that they don’t already know. What does a young, childless, single man in his mid-twenties have to say that people in their sixties or seventies need to hear—people who’ve worked for a lifetime and raised children and grandchildren? What did I know about marriage or parenting—or life—when I was just recently engaged to my fiancée and barely out of seminary?

Only a strange mixture of faith and foolhardiness could ever compel someone to answer the call to ministry. So the laying on of hands is necessary to ground you and remind you who you really are, or rather, whose you are, and why he called you to serve him by loving and teaching these people in this particular place.

Maybe all the other pastors lay hands on a freshly minted pastor in order to keep him from running away. (Church history tells of priests and bishops ordained or consecrated against their will!) Or perhaps the laying on of hands reflects the inverted gravity of grace; rather than holding you down, the hands bear you up when you cannot stand on your own. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). When your burden is your vocation, your office—or even yourself—who better to bear you up than your fellow pastors, the other ministers who answered the call and wear at their throats the white tab collar that binds them to their oaths? Whatever the reason, the other pastors’ hands kept me there, and at difficult times in my ministry, they are sometimes all that keep me going.

Healing

When I was ten years old, my mother and I attended a special evening service at our Assembly of God church, where an itinerant faith healer was preaching. My broken arm was bound in a cast. My mother sought healing for the hidden scars on her heart, pain that I was too young to understand at that time.

The healer was not flashy or grandiose like televangelists in white Armani suits. I had been to healing services like that, where the preacher would cry, “I heal you!” and thrust his palm against your forehead to push you backward into the waiting arms of his entourage, who gently laid you down—“slain in the Spirit”—onto the stage floor. That method never worked for me, and I resented being knocked over by a holy roller. I pushed back.

The faith healer on this night was rather quiet for a preacher. A little overweight, he wore a gray suit, white shirt, necktie, and large, gold-frame glasses—the kind stereotypically worn only by engineers and serial killers. After preaching for about forty minutes, he invited people to come up for prayer and healing. One by one, the people went forward. He laid his hands on their shoulders and muttered softly. There was none of the fuss, loud music, and boisterous glossolalia that marked most Sunday services in a Pentecostal church.

Finally, my mom and I went up. He listened to our prayer requests and then placed his hands on my mother’s and my shoulders to pray for our healing. I didn’t feel any kind of electricity or warming, just his hands pressing firmly and ­gently upon me.

After the prayer, the healer opened his eyes, glanced at me briefly, and then turned to my mother to say, “This boy is going to be a great witness for the Lord someday.” Those words awed and overwhelmed me at the time, and I wondered how God had spoken to him. How did he know? What did he hear?

The man smiled and we returned to our seats. The following Monday morning I visited the radiologist and orthopedic surgeon for a routine checkup. After examining the X-rays, the doctor admitted his surprise at how well my arm was healing. In just a few days, the bones had mended as much as they might in a month.

I remembered the faith-healer’s hands and wondered if it really worked or if it was just a ­coincidence.

“Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

(Psalms 141:2)

Prayer

I have been praying or chanting these words in one form or another ever since my seminary days, when I served as the Evening Prayer chaplain, planning the ­student-led, evening worship services at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Sometimes in the cold, dark nights of Advent, I pray or sing them still.

In the various Pentecostal churches of my youth, I learned that the proper posture for prayer is standing with your arms and hands upraised. The Psalmist prays, “Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary” (Ps. 28:2). But after I was confirmed as a Lutheran during college, I learned that raising your arms in church is frowned upon. During worship, hands are not meant for drumming on the pew or chair in front of you or lifting in praise toward heaven. Hands are meant for folding in quiet prayer, holding hymnals, and shaking the pastor’s hand in the “meet and greet” line after the service—nothing more.

At my first call, some of the older members got up in arms when I suggested we begin each service with a friendly, hands-on “exchanging of the peace,” in which we would greet those sitting around us by shaking hands or even offering a hug.

“Pastor, don’t you know how unsanitary it is to shake all those peoples’ hands?”

I have always been a bit of a “germaphobe” myself, but the generous goodwill of human touch cannot be overstated. In our technological, antiseptic, and increasingly isolated society, church might be the only place where some people receive a safe, loving touch, even if it is only a handshake or a pat on the back. What does it matter if the person touching you is the neighborhood drunk or an elderly woman with a mouth full of rotting teeth? Don’t they also need to touch and be touched? It wasn’t as if I was asking my people to follow Paul’s command to “greet one another with a holy kiss”! The passing of the peace was too much for some of my parishioners to “handle,” and they would stand immobile with arms crossed during the three-minute exchange of “peace.” In the Body of Christ, some people are sore thumbs.

Baptism

The first time I ever touched Skylar was after she was already dead. She was born prematurely with underdeveloped lungs, and from the moment she exited the womb she fought for each breath. Skylar’s mother and grandmother were friends of my parishioners. They were lapsed Lutherans, and as often happens in times of crisis, someone recognized the need to call a pastor.

I baptized Skylar in the neo-natal ICU at Children’s Hospital. She was in a Plexiglas crib with bleach-white linens and padding around her. IV tubes stuck out of her thin arms, and a breathing tube was taped to her little nose.

Skylar’s mother had been allowed to hold her only a few times in the two days since she was born. I wasn’t supposed to touch her either, although I would have been afraid to do it anyway; she was so small, fragile, and close to death. I worried I might break her if I just brushed her skin.

For the Baptism, her mother handed me a foam cup with water from the nurses’ station. I dipped my index finger into the water and let it dribble onto Skylar’s forehead one drop at a time.

“Skylar,” I intoned, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And that was it, the simplest and most complicated Baptism I ever conducted.

Skylar died three weeks later. My wife and I were out to dinner when my cell phone buzzed and I received the call that Skylar was going to die within the hour. We quickly paid the bill and drove to the hospital, but she died before we got there.

When I arrived, Skylar’s mother cradled her dead child in her arms close to her chest. Mother and child were surrounded by Grandma, Great-Grandma, and cousins. Skylar was cold and blue, a baby robbed of life and air. Her physical appearance shocked me, but I was also spiritually traumatized. How could God let that happen? Her life was over almost before it barely began, and for what?

I watched the family weep and listened to their tears and silence. Friends and family streamed in and out of the hospital room, and every once in a while a nurse parted the curtain to update us about the coroner’s arrival or other matters pertaining to the death.

Finally, I was asked to “say a few words.” I don’t remember what scripture I read or what I prayed, but after a vigil that seemed endless, the family asked me if I would touch her and bless her.

My stomach sickened. I didn’t want to touch her. I didn’t know if I could. The death in her was revolting to me. Three weeks earlier at her Baptism, I feared damaging Skylar; now, I feared that she might damage me in some way. But I wanted to comfort the family, so I did as I was asked. When I placed my head on her blue forehead, the cold flesh startled me, and I had to close my eyes to pray, so I wouldn’t have to look at her anymore. I withdrew my hand as soon as I said, “Amen,” but her face stayed with me in my dreams, and I had nightmares about dead children for almost two weeks.

Communion

“Take and eat,” I say as I press a wafer into each palm. “This is the true Body of Christ given for you upon the cross.” Over and over I repeat these words as I place the bread into my parishion­ers’ hands. Sometimes I look at their faces, some crying, some smiling, some staring past me at the wall cross behind the altar or somewhere even beyond that, visible only to the eyes of faith. But mostly, I look at the communicants’ hands. Some are smooth and hairless; others are knobby and bruised. Some are hairy and calloused, but everyone’s hands are dying and empty until the Lord fills them with his Body and Blood. Someone has said that you cannot receive God’s gifts if your hands are already full. At the Communion rail we can finally open our hands and surrender our idols and attachments, letting go of all that hinders us. Then, as our hands move to our mouths to tear the bread with our teeth and drink the wine, we are full, if only for a moment.

Chris Matthis is the pastor of Epiphany Lutheran Church in Castle Rock, Colorado. He lives with his wife and son in suburban Denver.